Joost

@dariohudon@mas.to @forpeterssake@mastodon.xyz As for what the arguments against it were — same as anywhere I guess. Shopkeepers complaining that reducing or eliminating car traffic would destroy their business. Car owners complaining that it would make the everyday life of "regular working people" harder.

@dariohudon@mas.to @forpeterssake@mastodon.xyz But @forpeterssake@mastodon.xyz makes a good point, though. It's hard to imagine now how deeply entrenched the belief in urban government was that cars, and direct traffic in general, were the future, and responsible governance meant literally paving the way for that future. In Amsterdam, whole historical neighbourhoods that are now cherished tourist destinations were destined for the chop to make way for highways right into the city.

@dariohudon@mas.to @forpeterssake@mastodon.xyz And we're talking about Labour and Communist politicians, who saw it as part of a greater vision of working class prosperity, replacing inner city slums with life in modern suburbs. It took literal riots to stop some of this destruction (tho tbf it revolved primarily around a new subway line in that case). And a cultural and generational seachange to change the mindset, as some rebels of the 1970s became policy makers and urban planners in the 1980s. /Sorry, long.

@dariohudon@mas.to @forpeterssake@mastodon.xyz Where they are now: — aged out (it's been a while!) — and/or moved out to the suburbs/commuter towns (there was a big exodus from cities like Amsterdam in the '70s/80s! See attached chart and https://twitter.com/almodozo/status/1017078006945320960) — and to some extent of course the resistance is still there, just the Overton Window has moved what the debates revolve around.

@dariohudon@mas.to Yeah the fight against car culture (with what were then gruesome traffic fatality statistics) was intense - "Stop The Child Murder" etc. By the time I was a teenager things were already a lot better (though incomparable with now), but I still have this poster in a box back home, 👇 and I can still sing the little ditty they used to sing in my mom's "struggle choir": Kies voor de fiets, voor veiligheid Gooi al je krachten in de strijd Laat je niet verlakken Door automaniakken..

@dariohudon@mas.to @forpeterssake@mastodon.xyz Some of that was in bad faith of course (a lot of working class people relied on public transport). Some of it was disproven (pedestrian zones turned out to boost commerce — though it's true that there were probably segmentated differences, in that the shops that flourished weren't necessarily the same ones as were there before). But the arguments are evergreen.

@dariohudon@mas.to Pretty good! I think the only correction would be that "laat je niet verlakken" means more like "don't let yourself be cheated / manipulated / exploited" (Huh, "verlakken" is kind of a hard word to translate!)

@forpeterssake@mastodon.xyz @dariohudon@mas.to The opposition was fierce enough though! It was a decades-long struggle, against entrenched political resistance

@oatmeal@mastodon.social Ultimate Mastodon bait